Your digital loaf can lead to identity theft
6August 24, 2007 by Colin
There’s a lot to be said for aggregating all the information you seed across your many online apps: Flickr, twitter, IM, del.icio.us, Facebook, your personal blog, and your work blog. Your family finds it much easier to keep up with your life. All those momentary details – like favourite coffee shop, new girlfriend, apartment changes, travel schedule – can be shared with family, friends and colleagues. People who want the “brand you” experience can refer to one handy url.
Trouble is, so can the less desirable. And I’m not just talking about Russian hackers who use that information to clone your credit card and buy Israeli diamonds and ship them to their cousin in Boca.
I’m talking about the mildly unstable.
Maybe an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend. Or that guy that no-one talked to in high school. Or an old neighbour who still thinks you killed her cat.
I think everyone has had that one moment – the moment where they regret being so open and transparent on the web. Maybe it was after the fifth unsolicited pitch of the morning. Or when some blogger inferred intellectual weakness and emotional immaturity based on something they wrote while on the can. Or when an old, old girlfriend “friended” them on Facebook.
I’m sure that, in some form, we all try to keep track of the personal and professional information we have made public while participating in our many social networks, 2.0 widgets and transitory communications like twitter.
At some point, all those digital breadcrumbs can be aggregated into a loaf of information. At what point to you pinch off access to that loaf?
[tags] lifestreams, tumblr, digital breadcrumbs, digital loaf [/tags]
From someone who is considering rolling his own lifestream feed, I’ll tell you the term reads more upscale than vanity feeds.
But I might do it to consolidate said vanity feeds and possibly serve it up on my about page in context.
Your post offers a sound counterpoint.
p.s. – As a follow up to “Who moved my cheese” you should consider writing the tome “Who pinched my loaf?”
Look out…Facebook alone may be looking to track you down and pinch your loaf. (Why does that sound vaguely rude?)
Facebook to open goldmine of data to advertisers
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2317509.ece
snip:
“The site is a potential goldmine to advertisers because it contains a host of data on its users, such as their birthdate, interests, events they plan to attend, holidays and musical tastes, as well as numerous photographs. The new model is at an early stage, but is to be piloted soon. It will enable advertisers to visit a dedicated website through which they could track down users more precisely than using traditional, blunter, targeting methods.”
Because it is rude.
Here’s an opinion on Facebook’s privacy “challenges”:
http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/
Yes, I saw/listened to it on your other blog. Right around the same time that The Friendly Ghost’s aggregator (Podcasts Plugs) was featuring that quite good SophosPodcast:
Facebook and identity theft
http://www.sophos.com/security/podcasts/
(I wonder if “pinch your loaf” will ever make it into the Urban Dictionary….)
Nice metaphor! I don’t know, but I wonder about people who feel a need to put EVERYTHING about themselves online! Yes, let’s share and let’s discuss, but whatever happened to privacy? And do I really care about what you had for lunch? What is my NEED TO KNOW?
[...] Canuckflack / Your digital loaf can lead to identity theft From Colin McKay: we all have regrets at some point about too much of ourselves online. (tags: SMT10) [...]